Winter Counts(80)
Marie indicated I should sit next to her on a knockoff Pendleton blanket she’d laid on the floor. I sat down, the comforting smell of the sweetgrass thick in the air. About fifteen minutes later, Jerome’s grandson Rocky and another guy I didn’t know walked in, followed by Jerome himself. He slipped a leather bag off his shoulder, rested it against the altar, and carefully removed a few objects. He passed each one through the sweetgrass smoke before setting them on the altar. I saw eagle bone whistles, feathers, two large rattles, a porcupine quill medicine wheel, a Tupperware box full of soil and rocks.
When he nodded, the drummers started pounding, and the other two started singing in Lakota. The drums were so loud, they caused my teeth to vibrate as I followed the keening melodies of the song, the words rising and falling along with the rhythms. After the music ended, Jerome picked up the pipe I’d given him earlier, now fully assembled, waved it in each of the four directions, and put it, too, on the altar. Then he began speaking in Lakota. I couldn’t understand most of what he was saying, but I understood that this was a prayer inviting the spirits to enter. Then he switched to English.
“I have seven children and four grandchildren. They’ve brought me the most joy in my life, even when they caused me grief. A lot of grief. To the Lakota, our children are sacred, wakan. It’s our job to keep them safe and teach them our ways. But bad things can happen. Kids get sick. They wander away, get lost. That is the hard time, when we have to reach out to the community and to the spirits.”
He paused, and the people said “Hau.”
“I remember when my son—he was only two or three then—became sick with some illness. The doctors couldn’t figure out what it was. He was in bad shape—couldn’t get out of bed, wouldn’t eat or drink anything. Coughing, sweating, moaning. I went up on the mountain and prayed for him nonstop. I asked the Creator to help my child. And the people prayed too. Family, friends, neighbors. The spirits heard me. They told me that I needed to believe in the pipe. Believe in the pipe, and if I did, my son would recover. And he did get better.”
“Hau.”
“Tonight we pray for the return of Nathan Wounded Horse. Something bad has come to our community, and we ask the spirits to remove this evil and return the child to Virgil Wounded Horse and send the rattlesnakes away. These rattlers slither onto our land and tempt our children with lies. We ask the spirits to help Virgil, and also to heal our people, especially our young ones, and give them strength to resist this wickedness. Thank you, Tunkasila.”
Turning to his helpers, Jerome said “Wana.” They went over to him and tied his hands behind his back with a leather cord. Then a large star quilt was draped over him, and they bound him with ropes seven more times, from neck to ankles. In each knot, Rocky placed a small piece of sage. When Jerome was tied up completely, the helpers laid him down in front of the altar. The table lamps were turned off, and we were shrouded in total darkness.
The drummers began playing again, and the singers joined them. I could hear Jerome singing as well, his voice muffled underneath the blanket. Most of the people sang along, and I was embarrassed that I didn’t know the words. The drums started off slowly, then began pounding out a more insistent tempo. The drums were like a heartbeat, pounding, pulsing, hammering, and then we were united by the sounds of the singers. In the blackness, it was difficult to tell how much time was passing. I focused on the rising and falling melodies of the songs, the voices of the singers, the words of prayer and lamentation.
Then a loud whistle sounded, and I heard rattles beginning to shake to the rhythm of the drums. It felt at least ten degrees warmer in the room, and the air seemed like it was charged with electricity. Negative and positive ions, transforming themselves, attraction and repulsion, gain and loss. The hair on my neck bristled as I noticed bluish sparks near the altar. Beginning to feel dizzy and disoriented from the heat and the sounds, I tilted my head back to breathe more deeply, and when I did that, something touched my head, something soft. It felt like a bird circling me, tapping the sides of my face and neck. Then it flew away.
The drumming became even louder, and the heat was nearly unbearable. Light-headed, dazed, I lowered my chin onto my chest to steady myself. I took deep breaths and concentrated on the sound of my own respiration.
Then I heard voices, screaming, and the sound of gunfire off in the distance, but coming closer. I opened my eyes and saw women and children running in terror, being chased by men in uniforms. Soldiers. They were firing on those fleeing, shooting them in the back. Hundreds of Indians were running in all directions, and I was surrounded by dead bodies in a grassy meadow. The sound of thunder split the sky, exploding in my head, the roar deafening. On a hillock above the field, the soldiers had a giant cannon firing directly on the panicked Indians while other soldiers ran out onto the field in pursuit. I saw one soldier shoot a woman carrying a baby. When she went down, the child wailed in terror, but then stopped crying for a moment and looked straight at me. I wanted to reach out and help her, but the soldier ran over and shot the child in the head.
I watched in horror as the soldiers kept firing on the unarmed people. Some people swerved suddenly to outwit the shooters, but it was useless with so many weapons trained on them. The screaming and howling grew louder as the bullets rained down. Then, almost on cue, the people started running in the same direction. There was a small hill at the other edge of the meadow with a building on its crest that looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place it. Then it came to me. The abandoned museum, the mass grave.